Playtech Founder Announces Intention to Sell Shares

Teddy Sagi, the Israeli billionaire who founded the giant casino software and games developer company, Playtech, has announced his plans to sell $400 million worth of shares. This is in line with Sagi’s plans to divest his holdings away from online gambling and trading. Brickington Trading, which controls Sagi’s Playtech holdings, will be placing 32 million shares on the market.

At the end of last week, Playtech’s shares hit a record high, but following Teddy Sagi’s announcement, the shares fell back and tumbled 7% on Monday’s closing price. Sagi began selling his Playtech stock in November last year. After the current round of selling shares, he will be left with only a 6.3% stake in the company – or around 20.1 million shares. As such, he will not be the largest shareholder in the business. By bringing his stake to lower than 15%, Sagi and Brickington Trading activate the termination of the special major shareholder ‘Relationship Agreement’ with Playtech which was based on the conditions of Brickington’s sale of Playtech shares last year. The agreement allowed Teddy Sagi to appoint directors to Playtech and to be the provider of inter-company services to the casino group.

When asked about the reasons for selling so many of his stocks in Playtech – a highly successful online casino business that provides software to supreme online casinos such as Casino.com. Sagi said that while he still believes “in the long-term success of Playtech,” he wants to focus more on property development.

“I want to develop my property portfolio, not only in London but also in other European Capital cities, and be in the vanguard of the co-working revolution,” he said. “I envisage taking some of the most iconic properties and establishing creative hubs where start-ups, SME’s and entrepreneurs can work, network and grow together.”

In the meantime, Playtech continues to provide new games to its partner casinos at an exceptional rate. It was only this month that the group introduced God of Storms slot to its ever-popular Age of the Gods series. The company has noted that this eighth title in the series has managed to gather a lot of fans already, as players are transported back to Ancient Greece. The 5 reel, 25 line progressive jackpot game is linked to four jackpots and offers a Wild Wind respin feature and multipliers of up to 5 times.